If we believe Spitta, Bach also left behind him one of those anagram-pieces which were so in the taste of his time—the fugue on the letters B A C H. But the composition seems too leathern and insipid for us to be able to express a decided opinion. There is in literary criticism a well-known false method—the wish utterly to deny insipidity to the great. But since Bach’s authorship of the “B A C H” fugue is not vouched for, and since he never elsewhere put together so many dull pages, we are not compelled to load his memory with its weight.
John Mattheson, at the age of 37.
As we find in Bach the possibilities of all the great forms of the succeeding centuries, so we find in him also all the germs of future expression, rhythm, harmony, and melody. Nothing is more perverse than to regard this music as academic and expressionless. Expression is never absent from counterpoint except when it sacrifices impressionism to the mere display of technical mastery. We shall even to-day seek in vain for piano compositions more full of expression than some of the preludes contained in the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. In the remarkably decadent C sharp minor, in the B minor, so full of gentle mournfulness, in the E flat minor with its grandiose solemnity, in the B flat minor with its organ-like seriousness, or in the F major with its Meister-singer melody[88] (in Part II. Wohlt. Kl.), there is an unsurpassed depth of expression. Nowhere is there a greater variety of characters than would be presented by a comparison of the fugal themes in this work. Merely to turn over a few of its pages is to see before us an abundance of content which no other music-book would easily conceal in so narrow a space. It is in the service of expression that the motives for the architecture of the fugues are unfolded; in the service of expression the rhythms are developed, whose skilful planning is only clearly seen in a piece like the G major Prelude (Wohlt. Kl. i.); in the service of expression are formed the harmonies, from their simple successions, as in the C major Prelude (W. Kl. i.) or of the C sharp major Prelude (W. Kl. ii.) to the complicated retardations and tied notes of the B flat minor Prelude (Wohl. Kl. i.), or in the B minor fugue (W. Kl. i.) on a theme so wonderfully sad that no bolder chords can be found in the days of the most furious chords of the seventh. In Bach, says Marpurg, the different talents of a hundred other musicians were united.
Bach played very quietly. In his time technique began to change its principles. The hand was no longer to be held out flat, but curved, so as to provide a series of hammers rather than levers. The passing of the fingers over each other, as practised by Mattheson, a player of distinction almost equal to Bach and Handel, gave way to a systematic under-passing; and the thumb, which Bach had seen applied by former generations only to wide stretches, began its important part as the “linking” finger. The remains of Bach’s finger-exercises, and the directions which stand in the lesson-book of his son Philip Emanuel, have been usefully compared[89] by Spitta, who has drawn a picture of the technique of John Sebastian, which in its grandeur well fits with his work. “It was a system of under-moving fingers, worked out by unparalleled practice and talent, applying not merely to the thumb but to the middle fingers, and usually so arranged that only a longer finger can pass over a shorter.[90] This produced a technique which, like Bach’s work, united past and future in one classic method. Our thumb-technique, which in essentials goes back to Philip Emanuel, is a mere fragment of Bach’s method, just as the whole succeeding art was, compared with Bach, but a fragment on a large scale.” But it is hard to be clear on these matters. Before the time of “schools” technique was a matter of personality; and reconstruction to us of a later age is utterly out of the question.
Should a diligent scholar try to reconstruct from Bach’s pieces his technique, so far as it had influenced musical form, he would soon be brought to a pause. For when we examine this literature, we see that to the master everything was possible, and that he never gave form to a conception for the sake of technique. He is a stupendous genius who does not write for everybody, and therefore his compositions are often difficult; but the difficulties are never against the genius of the clavier, and can be conquered by anything but idleness. He has, again, written some taking show-pieces, like the Prelude and Fugues in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 29), which, as “paying” salon pieces, sound much harder than they are; and, alongside of these again, are pieces which spring from the very joy in the abundance of possible techniques and of new conceptions. To this class belongs, if genuine, the Fantasia in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 8), in which pure technical fireworks are let off, of short scale passages for both hands, swinging chords and octaves, running motives with astonishing passage effects, passages of sixths with over and under accompaniments, and melodious phrases with embellishing harmonies. But here the first rank is taken by the famous “Goldberg” variations, already printed by Bach, partly set for two manuals, an album of thirty technical conceptions, in which everything possible in tone-material is contained, from arioso to canon, from grave to presto; everything, in fact, which Bach ever adopted for the setting of his ideas. The twenty-ninth variation, which can also be played on one manual, brings before us chords and passages of interwoven beauty which prepare beforehand the way for Liszt. Even in technique, then, the genius of Bach stretches over centuries.
It cannot be exactly maintained that Bach treated the clavier wholly individually, but he nevertheless has helped to individualise it. At the beginning of last century, when the clavier was still for the most part an accompanying instrument, when it sustained in the orchestra the foundation-harmonies, even if at the same time another clavier entered in concerto-wise, genius itself could not release the instrument from this corporate conception without running against the whole spirit of the time. It is remarkable how Bach left it the character of a thorough-bass instrument, and yet allowed it so much independence. It has at one time the divided nature of the unifying organ, as organ-pieces were then regarded still as practically ready for the clavier; at another the pizzicato and running character of the lute. Bach could entitle his formally interesting E flat major piece, Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro (Steingräber, vii. 30) as Prélude pour le luth ò çembal.[91] From the traditions of the lute and organ the peculiar nature of the clavier comes into existence, and it was in the maintenance of the via media between these less delicately expressive extremes that its future lay. How individually Bach regarded the clavier is seen in the pieces in which it is combined with flute and viol da gamba or violin, or in the concertos with one, two, three, or even four claviers. Among these the C major and D minor concertos with three claviers, now combined, now isolated, represent the highest points of this older form of the concerto, as yet not adapted for solo-virtuosity. But yet plainer is his insight in the direct transcriptions which he has made of violin pieces for the clavier. He interpolates in the freest fashion middle voices, which are kept together by “pedals;” ornamentations which draw out the air of the melody in clavier-style; or rapid vibrating over-parts which make up for the loss of the long-drawn violin tones. And by this insight into the peculiar character of the clavier, he makes it more capable not only of speaking with its own voice, but also of spreading over wider circles the literature of other instruments by means of suitable and self-intelligible transcriptions. Bach’s extreme love of this instrument, which so often gave him the means of expression for his musical conceptions, contributed not the least to such an interpretative mission. Slowly the world accustomed itself to understand music, not per chorum, but per instrumentum.
It is at this point that the great need is felt. A mechanical advance is required to bring the expressive capacity of the clavier into a line with the demands of genius upon it. The rivalry between the clavicymbal and the clavichord[92] was not yet quite decided. In Romance lands the former was the favourite; in Germany the latter. On the former great effects could be better produced; on the latter the more soulful tone, and the unique embellishment called “Bebung.” Bach wrote much, including the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, for the clavichord, which even his son Philip Emanuel still preferred to the clavicymbal. But he was so unable to disguise from himself the counter advantages of the fuller and broader quill-instrument, that he published pieces for “Kiel-flügel”[93], with two manuals and registers for forte and piano. These registers were the only means for giving light and shade to the monotonous note of the “cymbal”; to give light and shade by turns, as in the organ, so that on the upper manual a melody could be played loud, and on the lower the accompaniment could be played soft. In Kuhnau we see the forte and piano, which he aimed at by simply striking on the clavichord, used as a means of expression. In the Biblical Stories Jacob has just been cheated by Laban, in receiving Leah for Rachel. “The bridegroom is contented,” as a minuet shows us; but “his heart prophesies misfortune,” and the measure rushes on, becomes piano and più-piano; suddenly Jacob takes heart again—forte; after a bar or two he goes to sleep—piano; he wakes—forte; falls into deep slumber—piano. In his “Italian Concerto” Bach had made a much more specialised use of this by the register. He had mingled loud and soft parts, and each hand alternately is marked forte or piano. In these, and similarly in the echo-movement of the suite with “Ouverture à la manière française,” we are led to think of a splendid clavicymbal, such as the one preserved ostensibly as Bach’s in the Berlin Museum of Instruments. In that, every one of the combinations of four strings can be altered by pulling a register: the manuals admit of coupling, and a soft lute-stop is provided.